Wednesday, 1 June 2016

Those Berrigan Boys

I
recently attended the memorial service for Fr. Dan Berrigan SJ.I’d never met the man but he was an
inspiration.

A
familiar figure at anti-war protests he had the look of the true believer –
someone who had come to terms with his mission in life and intended to
prosecute it to the fullest.

His
brother, Fr. Philip Berrigan SSJ, was no less committed, and yet he had the eyes
of a boxer, always alert for the jab or hook that would soon be coming.

I
remember an activist friend from Baltimore saying: “I always felt safer when
Phil was at a protest for he was a formidable man if things got ugly. Dan was a
quieter presence but equally fearless.”

Things
often got ugly for the Berrigan Brothers and the militant pacifists around
them. They believed that war was immoral and that those who promoted it should
be called to account.

St.
Francis Xavier Church was jam-packed despite a deluge of rain. Many familiar activist
faces were sprinkled throughout the congregation.

Father
Dan had obviously touched everyone attending the service. The heartfelt grief
was curried by a feeling that if things had not gotten worse, they had hardly
improved much either.

Dan
Berrigan himself was no pie in the sky optimist; he was of the opinion that a
dogged evil still held sway in worldly affairs – and yet, if good people stood
up and did the right thing, that evil could be held at bay, if not defeated.

Standing
amidst the crowd of mourners at the back of the church, I idly wondered what
this pacifist priest had thought of the upcoming presidential contenders – one
a know-nothing, aggressive nationalist, the other a hawk whenever the chips are
down, as they so often are in the US.

One
of the speakers stated that Dan would not wish to be placed upon a pedestal –
for that merely allows the rest of us to shirk our social, moral, and political
responsibilities.

Dan
Berrigan believed in building and fostering community through individual
testament, and his contrarian spirit suffused the ornate church on that wet Friday
morning.

The
service pulsed with commitment as speaker after speaker recalled the Berrigans
and their shock tactics that included pouring blood on draft records or burning
them with homemade napalm.

They
and their comrades were no turn-your-cheek Christians but, for the most part, outraged
Irish-American Catholics who took hammers to warships and missiles, and accused
US presidents of war crimes.

They
went to the wall for their beliefs and as Dan wrote for the Catonsville Nine
Statement in 1968 – “The suppression of truth stops here. This war stops here!”

The
question posed to us at the service was the unlikely, “Are we prepared to wake
from our day-to-day slumbers and confront the evils of poverty and militarism
in these United States of Amnesia?”

The
Berrigan Brothers were not popular with many Irish-Americans for they
repeatedly questioned US foreign policy. But time has proved them right about
Vietnam, Iraq and the many other wars of choice.

And yet they were grudgingly
respected for they didn’t gloat, much less rest - there was always a battle to
be fought - if not against militarism, then against the degradations of poverty
in this land of plenty.

Dan
Berrigan practiced what he preached. Midway through the service the children
present were asked to gather around a well-used cardboard box.

It contained Father Dan’s prize possessions:
some well-worn books, photos, a banner or two, a worn shirt and a Ben &
Jerry wool hat that he wore frequently. Each child brought a piece of the
material side of this deeply spiritual, man up to the altar.

Despite
all his principles and commitment, Dan Berrigan was deeply human, as a relative
recounted. Inevitably at family gatherings one of the brothers would say “We’ve
been good long enough;” whereupon a bottle of whiskey would be produced and the
joking and laughter would continue late into the night.

Father Dan’s message remains – look
around you and witness the defects in society, then go beyond yourself and
don’t rest until you make the situation better.

Irish-America
should be proud of those Berrigan boys. They called it as they saw it and made
a difference.

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